Friday, June 24, 2011

One of the long time themes of Rabett Run has been how thin the rejectionist bench is, requiring the usual suspects, the Freds, Seitz and Singer, Willie Soon, etc. to cover all bases. Of course Pat Michaels and Chip Knappenberger have set up a small business in fronting. In this, the Tobacco Legacy Archive has been the gift that keeps on giving. POGO, well Paul Thacker landed another one in 2006, Steve Milloy it turns out took over $90K from Phillip Morris when he was working as a science churnalist for FoxNews. Fox News put on its best Casablance imitation when told of this

"Fox News was unaware of Milloy's connection with Philip Morris. Any affiliation he had should have been disclosed."

I didn't know what Tom was talking about re: Hansen, so I googled around and found this:

"The institute said Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, has received $1.2 million in prize awards from environmental and civil service groups in recent years for his outspoken advocacy on climate. "Under federal statutes and NASA rules, employees may not privately benefit from their public office," ATI said in a press release. "ATI's request seeks official documents which, if they exist, would inform the public about NASA's and Dr. Hansen's adherence to these ethics rules. Considering the records already obtained and the public record, compliance by NASA and Dr. Hansen is in doubt." "

So apparently, they are actually suing Hansen because he received public prizes. And boasting about it.

I look forward to their future lawsuits against every single US Nobel prize winner.

Hey folks -- wanna become a "certified global-warming skeptic"? Then answer the exam questions in the Supplementary Information section (page 20 or so) of this paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1871503&http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1871503

Speaking of dead people, the Fraser Institute, a Canadian "think" tank which has spread like a nasty rash to the US, and which propagandizes denialism, includes a number of dead people on its editorial board, still reviewing reports from the grave:

http://sixthestate.net/?p=1779

I wonder if other think tanks are being infiltrated by the dead or the undead?

ATI is suing NASA and Hansen to get his filings to report outside income and to get permission for outside activity. This data is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act because it is personal and not related to NASA's mission.

I'm not a lawyer but I'm hearing the word "frivolous". ATI has no right to federal employees personal data.

Talk about wasting taxpayers dollars. NASA lawyers have to prepare the responses, go to court, etc. All for a cheezy publicity stunt.

Since you're bringing up the thin bench for denialism and delayism again, it's good to point out that the very incestuous academic world of Wegman's attack-the-scientists work, and related work by his students, is almost typical - making his social network attack on climate science not just oddly hypocritical but simply unsound. If I have a family business and we all marry our cousins, it's not a selling point for your competing family business that we're incestuous and nepotistic if you marry your brothers and sisters.

And Wegman ties people together with occasional emails, not years of joint publishing.

Is that Tom really Tom Fuller? If so, how come the name links to a blogspot blogger page that only has one link on it? (not a blog, by the way, some sort of BS Javascript based i'l write you a social media app page).

Is Fuller branching out from journalistic fraud into software incompetence?

"(Reuters) - Willie Soon, a U.S. climate change skeptic who has also discounted the health risks of mercury emissions from coal, has received more than $1 million in funding in recent years from large energy companies and an oil industry group, according to Greenpeace."

“Clearly they [the AR4 chapters] may be too much for any one of us to tackle them all ... But, as A-team, we may for once give it our best shot to try to anticipate and counter some of the chapters, especially WG1---judging from our true expertise in the basic climate sciences ...

Even if we can tackle ONE single chapter down the road but forcefully and effectively ... we will really accomplish A LOT!

In all cases, I hope we can start discussing among ourselves to see what we can do to weaken the fourth assessment report or to re-direct attention back to science …”

So, before AR4 was even anywhere near completion, Soon was looking for ways to attack it.

Marion Delgado, yep, it does seem like Tom Fuller is moving from journalistic fraud to software incompetence. The links to the "Tom" account over at this, um, spirited discussion go to the same place. Glad to know that Tom Fuller has sold his soul to a sock.

The first link, actually -- I was trying to say that the "Tom" trolling above is the same "Tom" -- i.e. Tom Fuller -- who was writing garbage at MT's blog post. "cagw_skeptic99" is a different account, though it does go to the same JS-Kit that the "Tom" account does.

Wow, you've made some startling revelations. Gee, I wonder if I look up Michael Mann, Gavin Schmidt, or gee..every single scientist on realclimate.org, I discover they have extremely left wing political beliefs, what a shock. Bowers is nothing but a big loser who practices guilt by association. You know Mann, Schmidt, Humbert and Amman all drink alcohol, Bowers, I guess they are all discredited, can't take their word on anything. They'll just defend big alcohol, right Bowers, you freaking loser.

@Eli Rabett

You know, for someone as witty as you try to be, you come off as really stupid for upholding beliefs the likes of Naomi Oreskes over Fred Singer. Dr. Cadbury expects the bunny to be a little more intelligent next time, or does the bunny seriously think that Singer can't run circles around Oreske's brain?

"A beam with energy on the order of 2 x 10pow18 watts per square centimeter, pulse frequencies up to 75 megahertz, and wavelengths between 1 and 10 micrometers is aimed at a two-layer, 20-centimeter-diameter target.

The first layer is a 5- to 10-µm-thick sheet of conductive metal foil. It responds to the teravolt-per-meter electric field created by the laser pulse by "acting as a de facto proton accelerator," says Chapman. The electric field releases a shower of highly energetic electrons from the foil, leaving behind a tremendous net positive charge. The result is a massive self-repulsive force between the protons that causes the metal material to explode. The explosion accelerates protons in the direction of the target’s second layer, a film of boron-11."

Interesting post by Mosher over at http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/168975-leading-science-group-blasts-attacks-on-climate-scientists?page=3#comments, reproduced between the "########" markers:############As we discussed in our book "Climategate: The CruTape Letters" The use of FOIA by Steve McIntyre, myself and others was only initiated after scientists were contacted directly for copies of their data. This data was barely a few megabytes. Yet 2 years before we even contemplating issuing an FOIA, we know from the mails that the scientists contemplated destroying the data if forced to turn it over under FOIA. When we did finally use FOIA (2007) , the scientists in question delayed in responding, and when they responded they invented false and misleading reasons for denying the requests. The Information Commissioner has found that they violated the law, but the statute of limitations has passed. Finally, 7 years after the first citizen, warwick hughes, asked the scientist for the data, 4 years after the first FOIA request for the data, and over 18 months after the denial of appeals, the ICO has ordered the scientists to turn the data over. Seven years. I believe we have been quite patient. The story began with a simple request from a citizen to a scientist: I read your paper, can you send me a copy of the data? 7 years later, after denials, FOIAs, lies, appeals, stolen mails, the data will finally be free. I have a hard time reconciling these historical facts with the rubbish AAAS wrote:

"The sharing of research data is vastly different from unreasonable, excessive Freedom of Information Act requests for personal information and voluminous data that are then used to harass and intimidate scientists,” said AAAS, which bills itself as the world's largest scientific society. “The latter serve only as a distraction and make no constructive contribution to the public discourse.”

But for the scientists who refused polite requests from citizens to see the data their tax dollars paid for, but for their refusal to share data, but for their false excuses, there would never been an FOIA fiasco. I should know. I was there.##########

So the whole fiasco was all CRU's fault. OK...

Mosher talks about the CRU's obligation to taxpayers; does Mosher pay taxes to the Crown?

Also, is anyone aware of any meaningful analysis that Mosher has performed on the data that he worked so hard to get?

Has Mosher *ever* done anything meaningful with *any* climate-science data from any source?

"Horner accuses Hansen of receiving $1.2 million in outside income for work done as a federal employee. He does not note in the commentary (though it is stated in the lawsuit), that most of these monies were for international prize awards which, like a Nobel Prize, can be accepted by federal employees and do not count as ‘outside activity’ for which permission must be sought. The relevent federal ethics guidelines are quite explicit (see part d.1, and example 1). The four prizes in question (the Blue Planet Prize $550,000, the Heinz award $250,000, the Dan David award ($333,000?) and the Sophie Prize, $100,000) are all examples of an

> … award … made as part of an established program of recognition: (i) Under which awards have been made on a regular basis or which is funded, wholly or in part, to ensure its continuation on a regular basis; and (ii) Under which selection of award recipients is made pursuant to written standards.

for which no prior permission is required.

Thus the insinuation that Hansen might not have complied with ethics guidelines by not filing ‘Outside activity’ forms for these prizes (which are not required) is clearly misleading (forms would have been required for speaking engagements and the like which apparently total to only $48,000 over 4 years).

Similarly, the claim in the lawsuit that Hansen received $720,000 from George Soros is simply fictitious."

"Mosher talks about the CRU's obligation to taxpayers; does Mosher pay taxes to the Crown?"

Does Mosher know about Crown Copyright, or Trading Funds, or how the UK Met Office is an agency of the Ministry of Defence (even has a frontline unit) who are paid millions in dividends each year from profits made from licensing and sales?

But as you say, it's all CRU's fault, never the British government's. I'm surprised Montford isn't aware of all of that, though.

... there's more to duh research than meets the eye. Experts say they have to prove the obvious — and prove it again and again — to influence perceptions and policy.

"Think about the number of studies that had to be published for people to realize smoking is bad for you," said Ronald J. Iannotti, a psychologist at the National Institutes of Health. "There are some subjects where it seems you can never publish enough."

Indeed, people are still arguing about cigarettes almost 50 years after the U.S. surgeon general first linked their use to cancer and lung disease. In a recent issue of the Canadian Medical Assn. Journal, a detailed analysis painstakingly laid out a notion that most take for granted: that secondhand smoke in cars is bad for children.

Duh.

Or consider the case of Harvard sleep expert Dr. Charles Czeisler, who has spent about $3 million over the years demonstrating over and over that doctors who don't get enough sleep make mistakes on the job.......... the medical establishment said that doctors were different. When he published results showing that physicians' 24-hour-plus shifts contributed to car accidents and attention lapses at work, some acknowledged it might be true — but not for them.

Everyone had an anecdote. Czeisler had data. "It was dismissed out of hand," he said. "They use the same argument over and over, even when we've tested it. It drives me up the wall."...---- end excerpt ----

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Eli Rabett

Eli Rabett is a not quite failed professorial techno-bunny, a chair election from retirement, at a wanna be research university that has a lot to be proud of but has swallowed the Kool-Aid. The students are naive but great and the administrators vary day-to-day between homicidal and delusional. His colleagues are smart, but they have a curious inability to see the holes that they dig for themselves. Prof. Rabett is thankful that they occasionally heed his pointing out the implications of the various enthusiasms that rattle around the department and school. Ms. Rabett is thankful that Prof. Rabett occasionally heeds her pointing out that he is nuts.